The invention relates to a process for the automatic adaptation of the data to be transferred to a data-requesting device, to the capabilities of this terminal.
In today's data communication networks there exist terminals with different displays, input apparatuses and computer performances. Displays differ above all in the color depth, resolution, and size. Input apparatuses can be, for example, keyboards or contact-sensitive surfaces. When data are transferred from a data-preparing device to a terminal, it is important, for as short as possible a transfer time of the data, that the data volume to be transferred at a given band width be as small as possible. Since, however, it is not known to the sending device what properties the end terminal possesses, the data and therewith the data volume are not adapted to the properties of the end terminal. To an end terminal with a display with a low resolution and black-and-white representation there are sent, for example, the same data as to an end terminal with a high resolution and a plurality of representable colors.
This leads to the result that data are transferred which cannot be processed in the end terminal by reason of the latter's capabilities. Resources of the transfer media, of the sending devices, and of the receiving end terminal are wasted.
In WO-A-98 37698 an adaptable data transfer system is disclosed, in which a data-preparing server is provided which, either by software or suitable hardware, executes an algorithm for the generation and storage of a plurality of hierarchically ranked video data streams, in which it is covered, which multimedia characteristics a data-requesting device has, and on the basis of this information there is transmitted a special selection of the available video-data stream to the data-requesting device.
WO-A-98 43177 teaches a system for the dynamic recording of data transmitting between computers. A so-called proxy-server is provided, which comprises devices for the dynamic adaptation of data transmitted from a network server to a network client, in which system the adaptation occurs in dependence on a selection criterion delivered from the network client. The selection criterion can be, for example, the hardware configuration of the network client.
The problem of the present invention lies, therefore, in giving a process for the automatic adaptation of the data to be transferred from a data-preparing device to a data-requesting device, to the capabilities of the data-requesting device, which process can react very flexibly to the capabilities of the data-requesting device.